Henry Valentine Miller was an American writer. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, surrealist free association, and mysticism. Profoundly inspirational Henry Miller quotes will encourage growth in life, make you wiser and broaden your perspective.
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Famous Henry Miller Quotes
Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such Henry Miller
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience. Henry Miller
If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having. Henry Miller
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood. Henry Miller
It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another human being, not with the mind, nor even with the heart. Henry Miller
Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery. Henry Miller
Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. Henry Miller
Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring, through obeying the blind urge Henry Miller
To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself. Henry Miller
Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning. Henry Miller
The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. Henry Miller
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. Henry Miller
If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without. Henry Miller
Reality is not protected or defended by laws, proclamations, ukases, cannons and armadas. Reality is that which is sprouting all the time out of death and disintegration. Henry Miller
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. Henry Miller
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation The other eight are unimportant Henry Miller
A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition Henry Miller
The real leader has no need to lead he is content to point the way. Henry Miller
Real love is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects, never demands. It replenishes, by grace of restoring unlimited circulation. It burns, because it knows the true meaning of sacrifice. It is life illuminated. Henry Miller
The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble. Henry Miller
The goal of life is not to possess power but to radiate it. Henry Miller
The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. Henry Miller
The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love. Henry Miller
Everything was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. The present was only a bridge and on this bridge they are still groaning, as the world groans, and not one idiot thinks of blowing up the bridge
If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things. Henry Miller
I sat riveted to my desk and I travelled around the world at lightning speed, and I learned that everywhere it is the same hunger, humiliation, ignorance, vice, greed, extortion, chicanery, torture, despotism: the inhumanity of man to man: the fetters, the harness, the halter, the bridle, the whip, the spurs. The finer the caliber the worse off the man.
Everything hinges on how you look at things Henry Miller
I relate these incidents briefly and hurriedly as they flash through my mind; my memory is packed with thousands of such details, with a myriad faces, gestures, tales, confessions all entwined and interlaced like the stupendous reeling facade of some Hindu temple made not of stone but of the experience of human flesh, a monstrous dream edifice built entirely of reality and yet not reality itself but merely the vessel in which the mystery of the human being is contained.
It was only in my forties that I started feeling young. Henry Miller
What I had begun, in brief, was a book of hours, of the tedium and monotony of my life in the midst of a ferocious activity
Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything except his own nature. Henry Miller
In the beginning was the Word. Whatever this was, the Word, disease or creation, it was still running rampant; it would run on and on, outstrip time and space, outlast the angels, unseat God, unhook the universe. Any word contained all words for him who had become detached through love or sorrow or whatever the cause. In every word the current ran back to the beginning which was lost and which would never be found again since there was neither beginning nor end but only that which expressed itself in beginning and end.
What I want is to open up. I want to know what’s inside me. I want everybody to open up. I’m like an imbecile with a can opener in his hand, wondering where to begin to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I’m sure of it. Henry Miller
Every day of my life, my tiny, microcosmic life, was a reflection of the outer chaos.
Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen. Henry Miller
And this in the black frenzied nothingness of the hollow of absence leaves a gloomy feeling of saturated despondency not unlike the topmost tip of desperation which is only the gay juvenile maggot of death’s exquisite rupture with life. From this inverted cone of ecstasy life will rise again into prosaic skyscraper eminence, dragging me by the hair and teeth, lousy with howling empty joy, the animated fetus of the unborn death maggot lying in wait for rot and putrefaction.
We create our fate every day most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior. Henry Miller
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood
I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company. Henry Miller
People think that vacuity is nothingness, but it is not so. Vacuity is a discordant fullness, a crowded ghostly world in which the soul goes reconnoitering.
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. Henry Miller
Through war a town may be reduced to ashes and the entire population wiped out, but what springs up again resembles the old. Death is fecundating, for the soil as well as for the spirit. In America the destruction is completely annihilating. There is no rebirth only a cancerous growth, layer upon layer of new, poisonous tissue, each one uglier than the previous one.
Every day that we fail to live out the maximum of our potentialities we kill the Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Christ which is in us. Henry Miller
There are times when one must break with one’s friends in order to understand the meaning of friendship.
Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him Henry Miller
I have never found such a man! I have never found a man as generous as myself, as forgiving, as tolerant, as carefree, as reckless, as clean at heart. I forgive myself for every crime I have committed. I do it in the name of humanity. I know what it means to be human, the weakness and the strength of it. I suffer from this knowledge and I revel in it also. If I had the chance to be a star I would reject it. The most wonderful opportunity which life offers is to be human. It embraces the whole universe. It includes the knowledge of death, which not even God enjoys.
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience. Henry Miller
Thus we walked and slept and ate together, the Siamese twins whom Love had joined and whom death alone would separate.
Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there. Henry Miller Quotes
The dissatisfaction which drives one from one word to another, one creation to another, is simply a protest against the futility of postponement.
Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. Henry Miller
Life stretches out from moment to moment in stupendous infinitude. Nothing can be more real than what you suppose it to be. Whatever you think the cosmos to be it is and it could not possibly be anything else as long as you are you and I am I. You live in the fruits of your action and your action is the harvest of your thought. Thought and action are one, because swimming in it you are in it and of it, and it is everything you desire it to be, no more, no less. Every stroke counts for eternity. The heating and cooling system is one system, and Cancer is separated from Capricorn only by an imaginary line You are fixed in a reality which permits the thought that nothing is fixed, that even the happiest and mightiest rick will one day be utterly dissolved and fluid from the ocean from which it was born.
To make living itself an art, that is the goal. Henry Miller
Life stretches out from moment to moment in stupendous infinitude. Nothing can be more real than what you suppose it to be. Whatever you think the cosmos to be it is and it could not possibly be anything else as long as you are you and I am I. You live in the fruits of your action and your action is the harvest of your thought. Thought and action are one, because swimming in it you are in it and of it, and it is everything you desire it to be, no more, no less. Every stroke counts for eternity. The heating and cooling system is one system, and Cancer is separated from Capricorn only by an imaginary line You are fixed in a reality which permits the thought that nothing is fixed, that even the happiest and mightiest rick will one day be utterly dissolved and fluid from the ocean from which it was born.
Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves. Henry Miller
Life stretches out from moment to moment in stupendous infinitude. Nothing can be more real than what you suppose it to be. Whatever you think the cosmos to be it is and it could not possibly be anything else as long as you are you and I am I. You live in the fruits of your action and your action is the harvest of your thought. Thought and action are one, because swimming in it you are in it and of it, and it is everything you desire it to be, no more, no less. Every stroke counts for eternity. The heating and cooling system is one system, and Cancer is separated from Capricorn only by an imaginary line You are fixed in a reality which permits the thought that nothing is fixed, that even the happiest and mightiest rick will one day be utterly dissolved and fluid from the ocean from which it was born.
An artist earns the right to call himself a creator only when he admits to himself that he is but an instrument. Henry Miller
Life stretches out from moment to moment in stupendous infinitude. Nothing can be more real than what you suppose it to be. Whatever you think the cosmos to be it is and it could not possibly be anything else as long as you are you and I am I. You live in the fruits of your action and your action is the harvest of your thought. Thought and action are one, because swimming in it you are in it and of it, and it is everything you desire it to be, no more, no less. Every stroke counts for eternity. The heating and cooling system is one system, and Cancer is separated from Capricorn only by an imaginary line You are fixed in a reality which permits the thought that nothing is fixed, that even the happiest and mightiest rick will one day be utterly dissolved and fluid from the ocean from which it was born.
I think someday you’re going to be a great writer, he said. But he added maliciously, first you’ll have to suffer a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don’t know what the word means yet. You only think you’ve suffered. You’ve got to fall in love first. Henry Miller
Life stretches out from moment to moment in stupendous infinitude. Nothing can be more real than what you suppose it to be. Whatever you think the cosmos to be it is and it could not possibly be anything else as long as you are you and I am I. You live in the fruits of your action and your action is the harvest of your thought. Thought and action are one, because swimming in it you are in it and of it, and it is everything you desire it to be, no more, no less. Every stroke counts for eternity. The heating and cooling system is one system, and Cancer is separated from Capricorn only by an imaginary line You are fixed in a reality which permits the thought that nothing is fixed, that even the happiest and mightiest rick will one day be utterly dissolved and fluid from the ocean from which it was born.
We have been educated to such a fine or dull point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it’s all about. We don’t trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It’s the democratic way. Henry Miller
Life stretches out from moment to moment in stupendous infinitude. Nothing can be more real than what you suppose it to be. Whatever you think the cosmos to be it is and it could not possibly be anything else as long as you are you and I am I. You live in the fruits of your action and your action is the harvest of your thought. Thought and action are one, because swimming in it you are in it and of it, and it is everything you desire it to be, no more, no less. Every stroke counts for eternity. The heating and cooling system is one system, and Cancer is separated from Capricorn only by an imaginary line You are fixed in a reality which permits the thought that nothing is fixed, that even the happiest and mightiest rick will one day be utterly dissolved and fluid from the ocean from which it was born.
Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring. Henry Miller
Life stretches out from moment to moment in stupendous infinitude. Nothing can be more real than what you suppose it to be. Whatever you think the cosmos to be it is and it could not possibly be anything else as long as you are you and I am I. You live in the fruits of your action and your action is the harvest of your thought. Thought and action are one, because swimming in it you are in it and of it, and it is everything you desire it to be, no more, no less. Every stroke counts for eternity. The heating and cooling system is one system, and Cancer is separated from Capricorn only by an imaginary line You are fixed in a reality which permits the thought that nothing is fixed, that even the happiest and mightiest rick will one day be utterly dissolved and fluid from the ocean from which it was born.
Dedication is not what others expect of you, it is what you can give to others. Henry Miller
It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis. Henry Miller
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware Henry Miller
Life’, said Emerson, consists in what a man is thinking all day. If that be so, then my life is nothing but a big intestine. Henry Miller
The real leader has no need to lead he is content to point the way. Henry Miller
Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it. Henry Miller
One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things. Henry Miller
Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. Today I am proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles. I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity I belong to the earth! Henry Miller
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant. Henry Miller
The earth is not a lair, neither is it a prison. The earth is a Paradise, the only one we’ll ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don’t have to make it a Paradise-it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it. The man with the gun, the man with murder in his heart, cannot possibly recognize Paradise even when he is shown it. Henry Miller Quotes
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written. Henry Miller
